Luther on Relics

But if, in the common consensus with us in which they began, they had taught and diligently urged the doctrine of justification—that is, that we are justified neither by the righteousness of the Law nor by our own righteousness but solely by faith in Christ—then certainly this one doctrine would gradually, as it had begun to do, have overthrown the entire papacy with all its brotherhoods, indulgences, orders, relics, forms of worship, invocation of saints, purgatory, Masses, vigils, vows, and the endless other abominations of that sort. But they have neglected the preaching of faith and of Christian righteousness, and have tried to accomplish this end in another way, with great damage both to sound doctrine and to the churches. It has happened to them somewhat as the German proverb about fishing ahead of the net says, for by trying to catch them with their hands they have driven away the fish which the net was about to enclose. AE 26

Martin Luther

Paganism Alive and Well in the Roman Church - God Grant Reformation

Mary Magdalene relic to be exhibited this weekend

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune

October 30, 2009, 6:15AM

Two Catholic parishes in metro New Orleans are preparing this weekend to receive lines of the curious and devout, pilgrims come to see and pray before a purported relic of Mary Magdalene, companion to Jesus and, according to the Bible, the first witness to the resurrection. 

No one knows quite what to expect Friday afternoon and Friday night at Our Lady of the Lake Church in Mandeville, or Saturday and Sunday at St. Anthony of Padua Church in New Orleans. 

Ten years ago, a two-day exposition of the relics of St. Therese of Lisieux in Lakeview drew 5,000 in the first hour. 

Both churches have scheduled lectures about the relics and long prayer periods for the faithful during the expositions. 

In an age of science and, according to some research, rising religious skepticism, exposing the human remains of saints and praying in their presence sounds ghoulish to many -- yet still brings some additional measure of peace and confidence to millions. 

"I think just to be in the presence of a saint you receive a lot of graces, including strength," said Mary Jane Drndak, an online advertising company executive who said she will fly from Dallas to see and pray in the presence of the relic this weekend. 

The Magdalene relic, a length of shinbone encased in glass, is in the United States for the first time.

The Magdalene relic is in the United States for the first time, being escorted around the Southeast on loan from its permanent home in the Diocese of Frejus-Toulon in France. 

It is a length of shinbone encased in glass, transported in a small bus in a tour organized by Richard Borgman, a former evangelical missionary and Catholic convert who said he persuaded its custodian, Bishop Dominique Rey, to authorize the U.S. exhibition. 

Borgman said he came to know Rey after leaving Africa for France. Borgman said he accompanied a Magdalene relic on an earlier exhibition from France to Brazil, where it was warmly received. 

He said he decided to arrange for an American exhibition throughout his native Southeast, as well as New York. 

The church does not officially vouch for the authenticity of the relic, although it sanctions its use if it encourages prayer. 

In an accompanying letter, Rey certifies that the relic on display has been in the continuous care of his predecessors, and has been venerated in France as part of the remains of Mary Magdalene "without interruption" since the late 13th century. 

Although there is some confusion around the identities of several Marys in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene was clearly a companion of Jesus who, according to evangelists Mark and Luke, was healed of seven demons. She stood nearby during the crucifixion, and according to the New Testament, was the first to see and proclaim the risen Jesus. 

Christianity rejects the notion, popularized in novelist Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code," that Mary Magdalene bore a child by Jesus. 

Although Scripture is not explicit, many Christians see Mary as a prostitute forgiven by Jesus -- and many, like Drndak, who said she is recovering from addictions in her past, see reflections of their own lives in her. 

"On Easter Sunday when they read Gospel about Mary at the tomb, I can feel the tears," she said. "When she first sought repentance, and especially the pain when she felt looking for and couldn't find him, I start crying when I think about it." 

"Mary Magdalene has something that brings us to the heart of what we need in our lives," Borgman said. 

Greek tradition holds that years later Mary Magdalene moved to Ephesus in present Turkey, with Mary the mother of Jesus, where she died. 

But Western tradition speaks of a journey to France and her subsequent death there. 

Although their role is much de-emphasized in recent years, relics still occupy a distinctive place in Catholic spirituality, said the Rev. Byron Miller, a Redemptorist priest at the Seelos Center in New Orleans. 

At one level, he said, the desire for a physical connection to the past is familiar to anyone who keeps a lock of a child's hair. 

"There's something about being in the presence of a relic of someone who was there with Christ during his time on earth that's very touching," Borgman said. 

Catholic regard for relics speaks partly to that interest, but Miller said a deeper tradition is also at work: 

"Relics of saints link heaven to earth," he said. 

Ancient Christian communities struggling under Roman persecution were careful to retrieve the bones of martyred colleagues. Believing them to be heroes of the faith and special friends of God, they gathered to pray over their tombs, hoping the dead would intercede for them and enhance their prayers. 

Miller said even today, a relic of some kind is embedded in or near every permanent Catholic altar in an echo of that tradition. 

As Christianity spread, relics were parceled out to faith communities across the globe. By the 16th century abuse was rampant and scandalous; the Protestant Reformation swept away the privileged regard for relics in favor of asserting each penitent's equal access to God. 

Miller said the church today does not assert that prayers offered in the presence of deceased holy ones are more effective than others. 

"Even so, they give us a form of intimacy with God," he said. "And why wouldn't we want God to place all of God's things at our disposal to get closer to him. And if relics are one form of that, and a strong one, I don't see the harm." 

Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3344.

Schedule of events surrounding tour of relic:

• Friday: 
  Our Lady of the Lake Church, 312 Lafitte St., Mandeville: 
  Veneration -- 1-6:30 p.m., 
  Lecture --7 p.m. 
  Veneration -- 7:45 p.m. 
  Benediction --10:45 p.m. 
  Candlelight Mass -- 11 p.m. 
  Removal -- midnight,
• Saturday: 
  St. Anthony of Padua Church, 4640 Canal St. 
  Veneration -- all day until 6 p.m. 
  Masses: 8:15 a.m. and 4 p.m. 
  Lectures: 9:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. 
  Sunday: 
  Veneration -- all day until 6 p.m., 
  Masses: 7:30 a.m., 9:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. 
  Lectures: 10:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. 
  

Fathers Book Audio for Audio-philes

I've started to post a few audio files from the Fathers book, just for you MP3 Audio-philes. Sorry about the quality. I'm getting the hang of "Audacity," so the "production values" will increase shortly. Click here for the "Preface."

Matt H

McCain weighs in on "At Home in the House of My Fathers"

A Treasure House! You Must Read This Book “At Home in the House of My Fathers”

October 30th, 2009

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I’ve been enjoying reading At Home in the House of My Fathers a new, huge, book containing letters, sermons, essays and other writings from the first five German-born presidents of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Brought to us by that German-translating machine, Rev. Matthew Harrison, this book is a treasure, indeed. There is nothing else like this resource, containing the passionate, Gospel-centered witness of the early leaders of the Missouri Synod. You will be deeply moved by their profoundly pastoral and confessionally faithful witness. You must get this book, and you can now, at LOGIA books, by ordering from their online web site”

Here is what others are saying about the book:

G. K. Chesterton once famously said that the church is the ultimate democracy; saints are not disenfranchised just because they happen to be dead. Harrison’s volume confirms this truth in spades. Great fathers of the LMCS speak also to us on a wide range of topics from the church’s call to mission at a time of opportunity (Pfotenhauer) to her response to moral issues in society (Schwan on the temperance movement) to a touching discussion of the nature of women as human creatures within the church (Brohm). But “worth the price of admission” is the multifaceted and very personal piece of correspondence from Wyneken to Walther on Anfechtungen, depression, and church politics, including the difficulties of their own personal relationship. Read, appreciate, and learn!
Rev. James W. Voelz, Ph.D., Professor of Exegetical Theology
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

A treat awaits you if you think you know the Missouri Synod. The contents of this book should have been the reason many of us had to take German in college, but alas, struggling through Thomas Mann was our lot. Matthew Harrison has done a great service by making available these essays, sermons, and other writings to English speakers. Walther, Wyneken, Schwan, Pieper and Pfotenhauer give readers more than a historical glimpse into an earlier era of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. They offer delightful theological responses to situations that are surprisingly contemporary.
Rev. Terry Cripe, President, Ohio District
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

House of My Fathers, H.C. Schwan on Mission

Dr. David Scaer Reviews "At Home in the House of My Fathers"

For all of his failings Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher saw the church was at least a community with its own culture. With the passing of every year, our pastors and people are removed farther and farther away from the men who defined who we were and still are as a

 church. Casting a line into the Missouri Synod’s past, Matthew C. Harrison has garnered the writings of the men who set the tone for the synod’s theology in the first century of its existence in a 826 page volume fittingly entitled At Home in the House of My Fathers. The subtitle says it all: “Presidential Sermons, Essays, Letters and Addresses from the Missouri Synod’s Great Era of Unity and Growth.”

During my seminary days in the 1950s, hardly any students were at home in German, the language of the founding fathers. Except for C.F.W. Walther’s Law and Gospel and Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics, their other writings and those of Loehe, Schwan, and Pfottenhauer were inaccessible to us. In a church that was rapidly enmeshed into its American environment, pastors and people began using materials emitting from Reformed and Methodist publishing houses.

 

Harrison’s collection of essays reconnects the synod with its noble past by making the writings of these fathers available in English. The writings of each synod father constitutes its own subsection, so for example, all of Walther’s writings are placed together as are the writings of the others. Within each subsection the writings are arranged in the order in which they were written. Some selections are very personal, e.g., Walther describing his own breakdown in 1860 to his congregation. Other writings are theological, e.g., ones on justification, and still others encourage pastors in their difficult situations. Depending on an essay’s purpose, the style can be homiletical, narrative, theological or historical, particularly with the funeral sermons, in which the reader can see how one era came to a close and a new one began. These are the links in the chain that holds the synod together.

 

Several translators were employed for this task, but striking is that editor Matthew C. Harrison did the bulk of this drudgery. He is not alone in doing this kind of mind breaking work. J.A.O. Preus and Fred Kramer made the Lutheran heritage available to us in their translations of Martin Chemnitz. What they did with a 16th, Harrison has done with our late 19th and early 20th century fathers. I belong to a generation that cut off from its past by language. Harrison’s At Home in the House of My Fathers provides a bridge to our past. We are no longer linguistically isolated from the men who made us what we are today. At an initial offering price of $20, even those who are mildly inquisitive can afford going back in time. By any estimate, a bargain theologically and financially.

David P. Scaer

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, IN

Reading From "At Home in the House of My Fathers"

Bonhoeffer on Success

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things, the figure of him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Mercy Pamphlets Available On Line

Click here for the panoply of LCMS World Relief and Human Care pamphlets.

Matt H.

In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.  

Thomas Jefferson

"Und gerade auch unsere Lieblingsdedanken"

"Wollen wir aus dieser Not herauskommen, so wird es zunächst notwendig sein, daß wir die Schuld für das Versagen der letzten Jahre bei uns selber suchen und nicht bei der Welt, die uns gehindert hat, unsere Gedanken und Wünsche zu verwirklichen. Wie es denn überhaupt notwendig ist, daß wir uns daran erinnern, daß bisher jede wirkliche Erneuerung der Kirche mit einer Bußbewegung begonnen hat. Zu dieser Buße gehört, daß wir bereit sind, alle unsere Pläne, und gerade auch unsere Lieblingsgedanken unter das Gericht des göttlichen Wortes zu stellen. Nur was im Feuer dieses Gerichts bleibt, was von aller Eitelkeit, die in der Kirche ja stets so viel Schaden angerichtet hat, geläutert ist, kann im Neubau der Kirch Wert haben."

A friend sent this from Sasse's, Rundbriefe 1, recently found in a German archive. 

This statement alone is worth learning German. 

Matt H. 

Integrity

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”

Achebe

Sermon by William Dallmann

Peperkorn posted this incredible sermon some time ago. I just preached at Dallmann's church (Mt. Olive) in Milwaukee. Dallmann was a student of C.F.W. Walther, and had visited Walther on his death bed in 1887. Walther reportedly told him to make sure he continued his work among English speaking Americans.

I met two elderly women who had been confirmed by Dallmann prior to 1940.

Truly amazing. Click HERE.

William Dallmann, president of the English Synod of Missouri, vice-president of the Missouri Synod and editor of The Lutheran Witness, was born at Neu Damerow, Pomerania on December 22, 1862 (d. 2 February 1952).

Matt H

High Culture

"If you're not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there."

Luther

Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence or learning.

Frederick Faber

Chesterton on Tradition

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), Orthodoxy

Walther on Charity and Division

When someone in the District/Synod has been offended, perhaps even by its leaders, or at least by those who especially wield influence in the District/Synod, it often results in animosity against that man, and the animosity produces the kind of conduct that poisons the brother communion that had existed.

My dear brothers, let us be on our guard! Satan is sly. Right now we are brothers, living together in peace and love. But Satan will most certainly lay for us snares by which he hopes to destroy the sweet, brotherly love we now have in our hearts. We dare never think that it is enough if we just remain united in our faith and doctrine. No, once love has been destroyed, it won't be long before one person believes what the other person rejects, and the other teaches what the first considers an error. As the Apology [to the Augsburg Confession] testifies, quarrels and divisions because of personal sins can easily produce heresy.

For example, one person takes a stand [on a given issue], and another person takes the opposite stand. Perhaps the one person dislikes the other; he simply can't stand him, and for that reason, he inflexibly maintains his position. It is frightening what harm can result when members of a church organization do not vigilantly guard their fraternal love. Be on your guard, be on your guard, for also here Satan will try to destroy this sweet, loving fellowship. Once he has divided your hearts, he will think, "Now I will also divide them with regard to faith and doctrine."

And you pastors, see to it that you don't expect too much from your people, as our quotation [above; Tappert p. 139fff.] reminded us. You can't turn every piece of wood into a dowel. It simply can't be done; not all wood is suitable for dowels. Never every indiscretion is of the sort that necessitates the procedures of church discipline. But once the devil has created dislike and animosity [in you] toward a particular member, he sees to it that you deal far more sternly with his transgression than you do with a member who has always treated you with love and good will.

"Divisions will also easily develop if the people immediately want to master and nitpick everything in the life and conduct of the bishops or pastors," says the Apology...

Walther, Duties of an Evangelical Lutheran Synod, in At Home in the House of My Fathers, pp. 316-317.

Press Release on "At Home in the House of My Fathers"

10-14-2009 > New Book Features First-Ever Translations of Early Lutheran Leaders

LCMS WORLD RELIEF AND HUMAN CARE – Press Release – 10/14/09

Unless they know German, members of the country’s second largest Lutheran church body could find few – if any – opportunities to read the words of their early church fathers. But a St. Louis, Mo., ministry leader fills that historical void with his comprehensive new tome, presenting many first-ever English translations of writings by the first five Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) presidents.

In At Home in the House of My Fathers: Presidential Sermons, Essays, Letters, and Addresses from the Missouri Synod’s Great Era of Unity and Growth (Lutheran Legacy Press, 826 pages, $19.95), Rev. Matthew C. Harrison presents a clear, historical view of the Synod’s first century from the pens of the church’s German-born presidents. The diverse collection opens with C.F.W. Walther’s first presidential address to the new Synod in 1848 and spans a period that includes the Civil War, the Great Depression, a presidential assassination, and unprecedented technological advances.

In the book preface, Harrison says that "the profound lack" of significant documentation from the Synod’s early years led many of his fellow LCMS members (who number some 2.4 million) to wrongly assume that their church fathers said nothing worthwhile, lived in less complicated times, and were "impervious to foibles and weaknesses we so often behold today in our church and in ourselves."

But the next 800-plus pages reveal the first presidents – Walther, Friedrich Wyneken, H.C. Schwan, Franz Pieper, and Friedrich Pfotenhauer – as men Harrison calls "thoroughly human." Three church presidents suffered at times from depression, writing about how church leadership challenges and concerns take a toll on both physical and mental health.

"They struggled along with the church with theological discord, the limits of churchly freedom in questions of worship, questions of church fellowship, church structure, hard-nosed and flippant clergy, and with congregations hard on pastors and pastors hard on congregations," writes Harrison, a former parish pastor in Iowa and Indiana who now serves as executive director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care in St. Louis.

The book also offers theological reflections to situations that remain surprisingly contemporary, addressing "Encouragement for Lonely Preachers and Teachers" (Pfotenhauer) and "The Offense of Divisions in the Church" (Pieper).

Founded by German immigrants, the LCMS used the German language during most of its first century. Nearly all significant documents from the church’s formative years "appeared in a language no longer accessible to the vast majority of pastors and people of the Missouri Synod," said Harrison, who began translating the church fathers’ words to help him "remain theologically grounded" amid his administrative duties with LCMS World Relief and Human Care, the Synod’s international mercy ministry that reaches out to people in need in 70 countries.

His hope, Harrison says, is that the book offers fellow Lutherans refreshment and encouragement "to work for the spread of the Gospel and the life of the church today, here and now."

Harrison is also the author of Christ Have Mercy: How to Put Your Faith in Action and editor of The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Letters by Herman Sasse, both published by Concordia Publishing House.

For more information, visit www.lutheranlegacy.org or www.lcms.org/worldrelief.

If you have questions or would like more information about this press release, call LCMS World Relief and Human Care, 800-248-1930, ext. 1380 or e-mail lcms.worldrelief@lcms.org.

Grave Site of F.C.D. Wyneken's infant

This shot is from Martini's cemetery in Baltimore....

Wyneken served Second Lutheran in Baltimore from 1845 to 1850, when he left for Trinity in St. Louis.

Matt H.

At Old Otterbein

This is the very church where F.C.D. Wyneken, second president of the Missouri Synod, had his first encounter with the "new measures" and American Methodism.  It was Pastor Russell (photo photographed) who asked him after a cacophonous prayer service, which Wyneken described as "howling and moaning," who asked Wyneken, "So what do you think?" Wyneken responded, "I don't know whether it was from God or the devil, but it isn't Lutheran." 

The Old Otterbein Church is the mother church of the United Brethren. Francis Asburry was ordained there in 1785 or so. And it is wonderfully maintained and is much like it was when Wyneken visited in 1838, just after arriving in Baltimore from Niedersachsen. 

Matt H.

NPR on Nehemiah

Here's a link to an NPR story on the Nehemiah Project in New York. Dave Benke is interviewed and does a nice job telling the story. The LCMS put up the first $1,000,000 for the original Nehemiah (and that money came back with significant interest). LCMS World Relief and Human Care's Lutheran Housing and Support Corporation provided interest dollars to make possible the LCMS's Atlantic District's participation in the "Spring Creek" phase of Nehemiah, pictured on the NPR site.

Nehemiah is a great success, particularly in comparison to the general low income housing fiasco... 

Matt H

Well, guess what now occupies Friedrich Wyneken's former home?

I'm currently in Baltimore for the Wyneken conference tomorrow. It's great to be here, and to get a good fix on all the sites. There is an 18th century Methodist church right next to the basebaseball stadium. I've passed it for years only to realize today, while preparing for the conference tomorrow, that it was in that very building where Wyneken had been invited to "lead a prayer meeting," only to be shocked at his first encounter with real live 19th century Methodism. "Brother Numsen called upon him to lead a prayer meeting. In this Wyneken was also abliging. He lead the singing of a hymn, read a passage of Scripture, and then spoke a prayer. In the course of the latter, the congregation began to moan and groan; then in one corner or the other sounded ghastly cries of 'Amen, amen.' then they sang again in a manner Wyneken had never heard before; the people became exuberant, the noise grew louder and louder. Finally the 'sweet hour of prayer' was over. Numsen stepped up to the stranger, who was astonished to the depths of his being, and asked in an ingratiating manner, 'Well, Brother Wyneken, how did you like it?' His answer was short and to the point:'I don't know whether it is of God or of the devil! It is in any case not Lutheran! But with this he incurred the displeasure of the pious Methodists; for he found himself in the midst of the so-called Otterbeinians,' who had passed themselves off as Lutherans in order, if possible, to 'convert,' a Lutheran pastor." Lindemann

The old "Otterbein Church" is a very significant congregation in the history of American Methodism, and the United Brethren. 

Meanwhile, Wyneken was taken in by a conservative congregation (yet not Lutheran, but a union church which was against the Rationalism of the Zion Evangelical Congregation - which ironically today is rather liturgical and is one of the few congregations in the ELCA to use the old Service Book and Hymnal), Second German Evangelical Lutheran Church. Soon he found himself filling in for six weeks, while the pastor (Haesbaert) was ill. Then finally in early September he made his way toward Fort Wayne. And the rest - as they say - is a whole lot of Lutheran history. When Wyneken was called back to serve this congregation from 1845 - 1850, he was installed by none other than the founding president of the General Synod, 82 year old Johann Daniel Kurtz (student of Muehlenberg), who according to Lindemann worshipped regularly at Wyneken's congregation, apparently miffed about the radical direction of the General Synod. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Oh, check out what's now at Wyneken's address: 316 Park Avenue, Baltimore. 

Matt Harrison

Finally! Order "At Home in the House of My Fathers" Here!

Only $19.95! Nearly 100 separate documents by Walther, Wyneken, Schwan, Pieper, and Pfotenhauer. 

EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN GERMANY (EKD) 
REJECTS AUGSBURG CONFESSION

(HANNOVER)  In a vote that has stunned both Lutherans and Protestants across Germany, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), published on Monday, September 28, 2009 its decision regarding one of the most critical documents to emerge from the Reformation. The Commission for Theology (Kammer für Theologie), the official theological advisory board of the EKD, voted to reject accepting the Augsburg Confession of 1530 as one of its fundamental documents. 

The decision had been referred to the Commission by the Council of the EKD who, after several years of scholarly discussions on the question involving both Lutheran and Reformed theologians, had requested a final vote. The Commission considered three questions in making its decision which it presented in a document titled, "Should the Augsburg Confession become the primary confession of the Evangelical Church in Germany?" The Commission asked 1) "What purpose does the acceptance of handed down confessional texts have for the fundamentals and understanding of the individual evangelical churches in general?"  2) "What is the relationship of the fundamentals of the EKD, as a fellowship of individual evangelical churches, to the fundamentals of her member churches?"  3) "What would it mean to accept the text of the Augsburg Confession into the fundamentals of the EKD?" 

Known simply as "Number 103," in a series of EKD texts available on line http://www.ekd.de/download/ekd_texte_103.pdf, the concluding statement reads, "The Commission for Theology advises the Council of the EKD not to accept the Augsburg Confession as a primary confession in the EKD fundamentals." The Commission is co-chaired by Michael Beintner (Münster) and Professor Dorothea Wendebourg. The vote was unanimous and agreed to by the EKD Council, which affirmed its readiness to continue strengthening the bonds of the EKD. Instead of accepting the Augsburg Confession, a document that both Lutherans and Protestants in Germany agree "has been the core confession of all of German Protestantism from 1530 to 1806" (Prof. Dr. Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Münster), the Council referred dissenters to its 2001 adoption of "Church Fellowship in Evangelical Understanding" (KneV). There it states that the EKD does not seek to form "a canonical church, like her member churches," since the EKD already is [the] church in the fullest sense of the word. Perhaps mindful that KneV was German Protestantism's response to the Vatican's August 2000 document "Dominus Iesus,"  which affirmed the primacy of the Roman Church over all other "ecclesial communities," EKD President Hermann Barth stated, "Measures by which the EKD must first become the church are not necessary, since she is already it in the theological sense, since church fellowship is church." The EKD reaffirmed it's continuing commitment to the Leuenberger Konkordie.

In addition to serving on the Commission for Theology for the EKD, Professor Wendebourg also serves on the Theological Advisory Board (TAB) of the WordAlone Network (WAN), a group within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In 2002, Wendebourg, coauthored a document for WAN in opposition to the Lutheran - Episcopal agreement "Called to Common Mission" entitled "Admonition — for the Sake of the True Peace and Unity of the Church."  In it, Wendebourg and others call, among other things, for ordinations "of equal standing," whereby episcopal and presbyteral ordinations are equally recognized. The "Admonition" cites the Augsburg Confession throughout.

Written by Pastor Kris Baudler
St. Luke's Lutheran Church of Bay Shore, NY
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Brentwood, NY

At Home in the House of My Fathers

It's In Print!!!!!!!

Bonhoeffer on Community

The person who's in love with their vision of community will destroy community, but the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Interview on "This Week in Seminary"

Just had the great pleasure of appearing on an internet radio show with several of our Ft. Wayne and St. Louis seminaries. Click HERE. 

Matt H.

One Happy Listener... But it took a banjo to do it...

"I'm loving the audio book, especially the chapters that begin with you on the banjo. I plan to listen to it on my way to Bismarck Monday morning." Tim Stout

Christ Have Mercy - Audio Book

Well, now that my book "Christ Have Mercy" (a theological rationale for the church's corporate life of mercy, interspersed with a lot of real life stories), has sold three or four copies (I think my mother-in-law bought them), we've now put out the audio version.

It's just out, so let me know when you've listened, and what you think. Recording it was a new experience for me and very enjoyable at that. Click HERE to purchase from CPH.

Blessings, Pastor H.

Thanks Friends of LCMS World Relief and Human Care